


rainflower

by fugues



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: Cutting, M/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-23
Updated: 2013-01-23
Packaged: 2017-11-26 15:01:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/651602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fugues/pseuds/fugues
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It becomes a way to remember, for IV. For every gravestone in his field spell, every time he hurts or fails someone who wouldn’t otherwise be marked in any way, there’s a line bitten into him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	rainflower

**Author's Note:**

> Repost from tumblr, 26/11/12; this was originally supposed to just be venting but then turned out shippy, and enough people were interested in seeing it over there that I ended up posting it. Now it's just being reposted to christen this account, I guess.
> 
> Title is for two of the meanings of the flower, which wiki gives as 'I must atone for my sins' and 'I will never forget you'.

It becomes a way to remember, for IV. For every gravestone in his field spell, every time he hurts or fails someone who wouldn’t otherwise be marked in any way, there’s a line bitten into him.   
  
The scar on his face is the first, though he didn’t inflict it himself; the start of it all, a line for Rio and a line for  _Thomas_ because that was the night he let that part of him die rather than try to go on as Tron’s tool with that last shred of innocence alive in him. It’s not a case of guilt or innocence where IV is concerned (because he’s a tool, not a person, and what do tools know of guilt and innocence, of salvation and damnation?) so much as a way of, in some strange way, paying his respects to himself. Or, rather, to Thomas, to Thomas who was a child and a person and who could have had a real life if their father had never been taken from them and returned as Tron. To Thomas, who would have dueled Ryoga in that championship  _fairly_ , would have shaken his hand and smiled and wished Ryoga better luck next time if he’d lost or shaken his hand and smiled and congratulated Ryoga if he’d won. To Thomas, who would have broken if he’d had to do even half of the things that IV has done for Tron. To Thomas, who came out of that fire with a number, a tool of revenge wearing his skin, because that had been the night that IV had stopped being a name and started being all that was left.  
  
(the pain is the only way, sometimes, to remind himself that he’s human)  
  
He knows that V knows. III doesn’t - IV has made certain of that, because maybe they’re not Thomas and Michael any more but he still remembers taking care of Michael in the orphanage after Chris had sent them away. And none of them are who they were back then, none of them are really brothers because they’re Tron’s  _tools_  and instruments of revenge don’t have family. None of them are who they were, but IV still remembers it all and he can’t help but want to protect III from  _some_  of it at least, even if III isn’t the brother he protected back then because IV doesn’t have brothers. Tron might, he thinks, but who knows what Tron knows? If he does know, he’s never given any indication of it, though perhaps it’s just a matter of thinking it a fitting punishment for all the things that IV has done, even if they were done in Tron’s service. V, though,  _he_  knows. He makes a point of it in the way that he watches Thomas closely sometimes, whenever he’s been out on Tron’s orders. In the way his hand will alight on IV’s arm and  _squeeze_  if ever IV brushes it against something or knocks it and aggravates a recent cut, if ever he winces and gives away that there’s something new.  
  
Chris would sit him down, clean his cuts and try to stop him needing the bite and the pain, if they were Thomas and Chris still. They’re not, though. They haven’t been Thomas and Chris since that night, since Thomas and Michael were led away and he looked on and didn’t stop it.  
  
(it had been two weeks since Chris had sent the dog -  _Thomas’s_  dog, it had been  _his_  dog because their father had bought it for his birthday - away and promised he’d look after them but he couldn’t do that with the dog too, and IV remembers spitting out  _you lied, you lied, you sent us away like we were dogs_  like a mantra when V had come for them, remembers Tron smiling at V’s side and telling him he’d grown up perfect for his purpose)  
  
But if they’re not Thomas and Chris, if they’re IV and V, then they’re not brothers. They’re Tron’s tools, and V can’t comfort IV because what is comfort when they’re not even people but instruments of Tron’s revenge? The closest V can come to comforting IV is to hurt him more, because pain is the only language IV knows any more and the only way for V to say he’s there. Pain is the only thing that IV can  _trust_  any more, the only way he can believe that V really is there and that he’ll  _keep_  being there, that V won’t leave him or send him away like Chris sent Thomas away. The only thing he can trust is the way that V will sit opposite him in the darkness of IV’s room, will run a fingertip down IV’s bare arm and count in a hushed voice every scar that his finger runs over. The way that he’ll reach IV’s elbow and flip his arm to touch where the scars swap from the outside of his upper arm to the inside of his forearm, will reach the end of the scars as they inch closer and closer to his hand with every new strike, will dig his thumb into whichever one is newest like he’s marking his place. Like some kind of punctuation, a period to end the sentence that is IV’s scars (and they’re a sentence of another sort, too, with the way that they mark down everything he’ll have to seek atonement for if they ever achieve Tron’s goals).  
  
That darkness, that pain, is like the only thing that’s real sometimes. Particularly on the nights when V catches him on his way in, catches him and follows him to his room and sits there in the darkness watching him while IV’s taking the blade to his arm. Sits and watches and doesn’t touch, not until IV has finished and V can count again, smearing blood over his pale fingers and IV’s darker skin when he reaches the end.  _Thirty-one,_  he murmurs into the silence, and the next time it’s  _thirty-three_  and V drags his nail over the two new cuts so that the blood from them mingles together and says  _sorry_  with the bite of it, says  _you shouldn’t have to do this_  with the slick feeling of the blood on his fingers (though perhaps IV is only hearing what he wants to hear, because there are no words and he can take things however he likes). He says something, too, with the way he presses his lips to the cuts and comes away with eyes alight and lips bloodied, the way he leaves the room after that and leaves IV wondering, every time, whether it happened. Every time that V does that - and it’s only sometimes, only ever on the nights when V has watched him make the cuts - it feels like a dream no matter how real the pain feels. Every time V does that, IV sits in the darkness and touches the freshest cuts and wonders whether he  _wants_  it to have happened.  
  
(they do it all for family but they’re  _not_  family, not any more, so perhaps it wouldn’t be so wrong to want it - except that  _affection_  isn’t something he remembers how to understand, and there’s not enough pain in the kisses for IV to understand them)  
  
The first time was  _fifteen_ , he remembers, and as the blade bites  _thirty-four, thirty-five_  into his arm alone in the darkness, V not having caught him tonight, IV thinks to himself that he doesn’t know. Twenty, four-by-five from the first time he felt V’s lips press against a fresh cut that way, and all IV  _knows_  is that at this rate, if Tron’s revenge isn’t complete soon then he’s going to run out of room on his arm, going to need to move to the other.


End file.
